How to build a Sunroom from an existing porch

I’ve shared bits and pieces of our remodel project on Instagram Stories and have collected lots and lots of questions. I was surprised by the number of people who said they have always wondered if they could do this in their home as well so I’m going to show you the first phase of this project and how we took our current back patio and converted it to additional living area in our house! First, a few notes about remodeling in general.

Budgeting for a remodel project

The first thought of any remodel is “How much is this going to cost??” The problem with big, or even small, remodels is the whole If-you-give-a-mouse-a-cookie thing. One thing almost always leads to another and sometimes it’s hard to find a good stopping point. With this considered, lay out ahead of time what your plans are, and what your limits are. Get a realistic idea of the costs involved and then definitely pad them! My husband and I started thinking about this project quite a while ago and then decided how much we needed to save to actually make it happen. We’re big Dave Ramsey disciples and believe in paying cash and cutting up credit cards so planning ahead was essential for us. Sticking to the budget in projects like this can be really difficult because unexpected things ALWAYS come up, but I’d encourage you to do it. My husband will think it’s hilarious that I’m writing this because he’s the one that’s great at managing finances and staying diehard within the confines of a budget and I’m the one always trying to find loopholes and push the limits. But when it comes down to it I’m a firm believer in budgets and the power of saving money ahead of time for things you want to purchase and sometimes that means holding off on things you really do want to do (hands down the hardest part for me). For example, we didn’t expect to have to replace our flooring on the entire main floor in our house. That ate up a huge portion of our budget, but we made the decision to do it, and the trade off is waiting to purchase a lot of the furniture for the new space. However you decide to do your project, set a budget and make sure you stay on top of it or it can easily get on top of you.

Do I hire a designer?

So many people have asked me if I felt like it was worth it to hire a designer. I understand that people are iffy, because I’ve felt like that before as well. We didn’t use anyone when we built our house 5 years ago because I felt perfectly comfortable making decisions. I feel like I have a pretty decent sense of style and design, but I knew from the start that I wanted to hire a designer for this project. There is a big difference between a “decorator,” or someone who simply has a great eye for design, and a qualified interior designer. A good designer doesn’t just pick out pretty things, they have an educated understanding of construction and architecture. They’re knowledgable about the building process and everything involved in that (electrical, finishes, carpentry and trim, spacial details, and so so much more.) I hired a local designer, Jaime Thompson of Poppyloft Design and I’ve told everyone I know that was the best decision I made on this project.

Jaime and I have been acquaintances for a while, and I followed her on Instagram so I could get a sense of her style before reaching out. It’s a good idea to find someone you mesh well with, both personality and style wise. A good designer can work with any client and in any style, but it sure helps to have someone who you feel “gets” you. I knew Jaime was a great fit for me when at our first meeting, she asked way more questions about me, my family, and how we used our spaces and what I liked, than she did talking about herself or her ideas. She really got to know me and what I wanted and then came up with idea after idea of creative solutions for my space and my needs. Her value has been immeasurable on this project. I’ll tell you more about her and some of the reasons I found it really helpful to have a professional designer on the next installment of this post, but if you’re local to the Boise area, I would definitely recommend her.

Hiring a Contractor

I’ve heard so many nightmare stories about this that I’m just glad we have always worked with great people in this field. People asked me how I went about finding a good person to take on our project. We hired the same builder who built our home several years ago to do this addition. That’s a huge bonus because he already knows exactly how our home is built and everything that’s underneath every board and behind every wall. He’s also a good friend and a great person so we were excited to work together again and we knew he was trustworthy and honest. It was also fun to see many of same faces that we got to know during our building process back again. if you’re doing a remodel like this, these people will be in your home and around your family constantly, so it makes a big difference who they are and if you feel comfortable with them in such close proximity! My advice when shopping for a contractor is to not just look at someone’s resume or previous jobs. It doesn’t matter so much how pretty their website is, it matters how happy their clients are. Talk to previous clients. Ask about the whole experience and if they’d hire that person again. I think word of mouth is the best tool when it comes to hiring people in the construction field. There are a lot of people who can build beautiful spaces. You’ll want one who is good to work with as well.

Building a Sunroom from an Existing Patio

So. Let me show you what we did. This was our spacious covered patio. It has 2 doors on the outside, one goes into our kitchen and one goes into the master bedroom. That set of 4 widows you see in the center are the widows of our family room. We have LOVED having such a huge porch, it was actually hard losing this because we’ve had so much fun back there, but we’ll be adding on a new porch eventually!

Since it was already a solid, weight-bearing structure with nothing on top, it was basically already set up with the framework to be an actual room. This saves a lot of money compared to starting a structure from scratch. You’ll notice that there are steps up to the house, so the first thing that had to be done was raising the floor. They take a patch out of the existing wall in order to get the exact height of the current home floor so it can match up perfectly. The floor is insulated, and then the walls are framed out in between the current beams.

Since we are keeping the exterior finishes on all of this, the inside portion of the stucco, etc. was torn off after. We specifically framed out new windows in the new space to fit the old windows that would be removed from the family room. If you can reuse anything, go for it! Things like that add up big time in the final budget.

You’ll notice we lost our exterior doors with this addition. We had them replace the door to our master with wall and our previous kitchen door is now just an open walk through. So to compensate for that, we put sliding doors on either side of this room where there were previously just windows. For example this is our previous kitchen window which is now a door (and a very confused toddler there, haha.)

And I LOVE this giant sliding door I now have in our master. Eventually we’ll have steps and a cute little private garden area right off our bedroom. I’ll show you more of this as it comes together.

Our builder waited until the outside was completely closed in and as much of the messy part was done as possible (tearing down stucco, etc.) until breaking down the interior wall of our house. Once this wall came down the mess began. You can tent and tape and sheet off as much as humanly possible, but it doesn’t really matter. You get dust and dirt and debris everywhere! You can see in this photo below how the former back patio door was removed and opened up and there’s a new sliding door in the kitchen.

You’ll also notice in the photo above we have dark hardwood floors in the kitchen and carpet in the family room. We always planned on removing the carpet to have one continuous flooring option, but due to a turn of events that will take too long to explain, we ended up replacing all the hardwood on the entire main floor. We looked at LOTS of flooring options and eventually went with these gorgeous extra wide 9″ planks. It’s a European white oak from The Villa Blanca Collection and we LOVE it. The warm honey color lightened up the entire space and the real wood adds a certain warmth that I love. My favorite thing however, after having dark wood for the last several years, is that I am no longer a slave to cleaning them!

After the floors went in they were covered right back up for painting. In the new space, Jaime helped me come up with some beautiful, classic trim work (and by “Jaime helped me,” I mean Jaime did it.) We decided to paint it all white, but I didn’t want it to look all Chip & Joanna. I liked paneling, but I didn’t necessarily want shiplap, which just felt a little too trendy (ironically, since it’s been around for hundreds of years, I know.) For a fresh take, we did our planks vertically, which was also very intentional as the room is already wider than it is tall. The vertical planking draws the eye up and balances the space. The large valance and crown molding above the all windows is because we built in custom “pockets” to hide roll-down shades so they can completely disappear when they’re up.

One of the purposes of this room is to bring the outside in and the inside out. One of our big investments here are these sliding glass walls. It’s 24 feet of windows that stack on top of each other to open up that whole back wall. It looks a little gloomy out there right now in the dead of winter, but I can’t wait for this view come spring through fall.

I also LOVE a good ceiling detail. We have a different style grid in our adjoining family room so I thought a clean, subtle grid would be nice in this new space as well. The semi-finished room here is a fresh, clean, bright new space that we absolutely love. Hard to believe this used to be our porch!

It’s not quite finished yet. We have quite a bit of lighting going in now, and some custom cabinetry, and furniture, obviously! We did a little more refreshing to both the nearby nook and the family room in order to tie all the spaces together. Jaime also had fantastic ideas there, which I appreciated because one of my concerns from the beginning was adding a new space that didn’t look like we just plopped it there where it didn’t belong. We spent minimal money for some amazingly impactful changes in the adjoining room that I’ll show you in a future post.

I’m going to show you more of the changes as this space comes together, but I thought you might like to see phase 1 here where it first went from porch to house!

The number 1 question people ask me is “But like, what is this room for exactly?” Well. You shall see! Now the fun part begins! There’s so much more happening here and I can’t wait to show you some before and afters when it’s all done. Stay tuned!

Have any of you considered doing something similar? Let me know if you have any questions about our process!

My husband and I are talking about redoing our floors and he really likes the look of dark wood floors. I remembered your Instagram photo of your dark floors when they weren’t clean and tried to find it to describe how hard they are to keep clean but he doesn’t really believe me. You should definitely distribute that photo to the masses to help them understand what they are getting themselves into when they choose dark wood. Your house looks amazing by the way! I can’t wait to see your final touches!

We are in the process of buying and hoping not to build-but now (thanks to you) I see the dark floors and sprint out the door. In fact we recently viewed a close to a million dollar home and I literally want to tape a sign of warning to the front door. I secretly question if that’s why they’re selling!!😂

I had to laugh at your budget discussion. We are big into Dave Ramsey as well. I think I talk about it way more than my husband does and he’s the one who is planner and saver at our house. I think I talk about it more because it’s made the biggest difference for me. Finances don’t stress me out as much as they used to.

It looks beautiful! Fun to get a glimpse of Morgan’s work. We are actually the family he bought the lot from years ago that you then ended up building on! small world – we miss the neighborhood and ward! so many dear friends.

Deb! I’ve heard your name many times, so fun to connect! Are you the ones who left that swing on the property that we now love so much?? I guess I have you to partially thank for this spot we’ve built our lives on and love to call home 🙂

Yes!!! When we bought the lot we lived over in Castlebury so the kids would ride their bikes over to the lot and my husband brought the swing over so we’d have somewhere to sit! haha! I’m glad someone is getting good use out of it! It’s a great place with wonderful neighbors! Glad you love it as much as we did! So many great people made that lot end up in your hands! just as it should be!

Awe, I love this! And we love that swing. When we first bought the lot we would go sit and swing and imagine what we’d build there. Morgan said one of the excavators was going to take it and he told them we wanted to keep it (I told him to not let anyone snatch it! haha) . It sat in the corner for the entire building process and we sat and watched our home come together. Once our home was done, we left it in the exact same space, grew a garden around it, and painted it turquoise. We even took our family picture on it a couple years ago! It’s our favorite place to sit and watch the kids play. So thank you guys for donating it! haha!

We are in the process of doing something very similar. We are turning our patio into a new family room (and extending our kitchen into the old family room.) We are also changing all the flooring downstairs to wood. We too our saving up and paying cash for the project. I love seeing your finished project, it’s gets me more excited to start ours. We are currently getting bids from contractors. Thanks for the inspiration and tips.

Sara, I love this! Not just the room, though it is absolutely gorgeous and I totally want to move to Idaho so I can be your neighbor :)… but the fact that you guys decided what you wanted, SAVED for it and then put off things like furniture to stay within your budget when other things came up. I often feel like my husband and I are the only ones who do things like this. We moved into a total fixer-upper and spent years fixing it up as we had the money to do so. Doing things right is expensive and takes time, but it’s so worth it to not have extra debt hanging over your heads. Thank you for sharing your process along with your gorgeous results!

Awe thanks- and I totally agree! I think it’s important to share things like that because it’s so easy to see someone’s life from the outside (like on the internet) and maybe make judgements, or assume they live in such a different way than you do, ya know?

I will let you know, haha. We cut in 2 vents in there and we’re going to see how it goes this summer (it was plenty warm in the winter). We also have shades going in that room to block the hot sun, but if it still gets too hot we might add another small unit to cool it better. It’s a west-facing room so I’m a little nervous about summer! We’re also going to be planting some large trees strategically placed for shade.